Yesterday was my birthday, so I am lost in thought. I guess in the past couple years it’s been rather noteworthy, and loaded with more than enough change to keep me running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Pardon the gruesome analogy. It’s been tough, and sometimes I find it hard to mentally keep up with the world around me and everyone in it in unison. I hate that factor of it. Sometimes I downright retreat into my shell, to recuperate from something. This summer I really feel like that is all I have done. One fight after another with my father, whom for the life of me I don’t know why I tolerate. He’ll likely never accept me as I am, but because of the fact that I refuse to back down he irks ever so slightly towards understanding. It gives me hope that brings me out to the sea that is our relationship, where I of course get battered about. It’s been a very different chapter of my life. This is certain. It’s been filled with wonderfully fulfilling transformations, and probably the most isolation, and loneliness I have ever experienced as a human being. But it’s still better than what some other people experience (moreover something that is been restorative to me). For that, I am lucky… no, grateful.

Where are we, what are we, where are we going, who are we, what are we? So many questions.

It’s to a degree why I don’t expect charity, sympathy, or pity from others, and why sometimes I even reject it. Certainly my life isn’t perfect, but I feel fortunate. From the most awesome mother figure one could ask for down in Florida, to having two sisters through her. I have good friends around me, though to a degree I tend to spent most of my time separated from them. I also spent much of my time in introspection, and too a degree I am unarguably hard to reach sometimes. It’s not that I am unreachable, but I (at least for this phase of my life) spend more time in my cocoon. I am working towards a time of “emergence” where I can embrace the world. Pardon the cliché of the analogy, but I am like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. The analogy though can belie the complexity of transformation. It’s not a step by step phase progression, but rather a random exploration. I go out, I recede, and then I go out further, and recede less than the time before. Similar to the analogue’s path to maturation, but more complex. We as people often use aphorisms that we don’t fully understand. Sometimes they act to enhance something, but sometimes they can act to oversimplify.

Wondering through an abyss where do you find definition? If it weren’t for colors and contrast, if it weren’t for differences how would we even be able to ask that question?

A human will never truly experience a process exactly like “forming a cocoon”, and “emerging after maturation” as something new. But the aphorism is no less true in the simplest sense, and the metamorphosis an internal one. I do still feel as if I am in the “cocoon phase”. I am in here, just building and growing. I have a clear intention, and a clear goal in mind. But pardon me for sometimes being difficult to reach. It’s a fascinating thing really, because all of us exist in variations of this state throughout our lives. I mean, it’s not our entire lives, but we often do have to take a step back and reform, and reemerge. We as human beings within our own psyche often go through such phases. We are in this shell because we want to be or because we need to be (in varying degrees), and we are also in this shell because we can’t ‘be’ any other way. But more than anything as human beings, we want someone or something to be able to reach us inside these “shells”. Even I do. Sometimes though, those we find that do try to change, or meddle in what is going on inside.

The biggest cocoon humanity has come to explore (a solar system), but there is still so much more.

Sometimes the forces that enter our minds contradict our own will. But sometimes, well, something wonderful can happen. Someone can reach inside those shells and bring light, love, and brilliance to that empty world. It’s our nature to both be individuals, and long from inside our shells for wonder. We all want someone to come and find us in our shells. The process is different for everyone, and everyone’s shell is different. But when you truly let someone in, or when they come crashing in, it can be a wonderful experience. But everything has a cost, because that same event that can bring light, and love and brilliance can instead bring blight, darkness and hatred. Not every shell is the same, remember? So we hold up these walls just waiting. Waiting for light, waiting for love. Certainly not everyone is the same, and the state of everyone’s existence is different. But it’s this one thing I feel is as fundamental to being human as breathing. Not everyone longs in the same way, but we all do. We don’t all long for the same things, but we all do it. But I am limited. My assertions could be wrong. But I have reason to believe they are not. Certainly aberrations can occur, but that doesn’t change the nature of the whole.

Where will I go, and who will I become?

I am no exception from these rules. I want, no less than anyone else, for someone to reach inside. I want that to be a light bringing one, not one of darkness. But we all protect these little shells. What exists inside these inner universes is up to us to decide. We exist in varying phases of being more willing to stand outside of our shells, and being unwilling to at all. The experience of being human is both wondrous and terrifying, beautiful and ugly, like and unlike, dark and light, an existence defined by contrasts, shades and hues. How would we think of the world if we saw it with sound? How would we think of the world if we saw with touch instead? It is our senses that define how we think of the world. Walking, and crawling, running and fumbling sometimes. Reality, sometimes to me, seems like a giant oxymoron, a walking talking contradiction. We both want to be seen and embraced, yet we simultaneously fight against that, and shell our selves up in side. We both want to be found, yet hide away in seclusion.

32 years and counting… I wonder what comes next.

Even the nature of the universe itself is absurd, so I guess it’s no wonder we are too.Who will see me, and who will reach inside? Who will come to embrace, and who will come to destroy? Can we ever truly know anyone, or just develop a projection of them that is reasonably accurate? What happens if someone truly becomes a part of another’s consciousness? Sentience, oh sentience, you strange and whimsical thing. So strange and confusing, both the questioner and the question. Perhaps even the answer. I find myself diluted in a sea of sentience, but I think not just about its nature, and the question, but about what lies beyond it? Is there anything greater than mere sentience? Who knows. Maybe sentience is the first step, and as you answer those questions you grow beyond it. But what happens when you reach the end? So many questions, so little time. Or is it? I can only assert what I can observe. I can’t know what is beyond me, or my capacity to observe or infer it. So I continue to float in an ocean with so many other consciousness. Silently hoping, sometimes overtly asking… Who will find me next? Moreover, in my endless curiosity, my longing, and in my isolation, I wonder… Who will I find?

Reneta Xian (Scian)

This is my blog where I write stories from my perspective as a trans* person, stories that give represent the GLBT community in my favorite genre, Science Fiction!

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